Blog Post

RIM Buys Scoreloop To Grow In House Social Gaming Expertise

More evidence of RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) meaning business when it comes to social media and consumer apps, and a possible sign of how it might potentially play a role beyond its own device ecosystem: the Canadian BlackBerry and PlayBook maker has just announced that it has bought Scoreloop, the creator of a cross-platform social gaming developer tool kit.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed by the companies. Scoreloop, which was founded in 2008, is headquartered in Munich, Germany, and also has offices in the U.S. and Asia.

Scoreloop — which currently works across multiple platforms, from BlackBerry to iOS and Android — provides an SDK for games developers to add more social elements into their content — for example, creating community interaction. It also offers them ways of incorporating in-app purchases and virtual currency, among other revenue-generating services.

But it is not entirely clear yet how extensively Scoreloop will continue to support other platforms besides those that RIM uses for its own devices: these include BlackBerry, QNX on the PlayBook and Android — in the form of Android apps that will be usable on PlayBook tablets.

“We’ll continue our cross-platform approach,” writes Marc Gumpinger, Scoreloop’s CEO, on a message on its own site. “But you’ll see that our BlackBerry solution will be unparalleled.” Fittingly, the note from Gumpinger is placed on a PlayBook screen.

In a blog post, Tyler Lessard, VP of global alliances and developer relations at RIM, notes that the acquisition is part of RIM’s new strategy to make apps more social. This was kicked off earlier this year with a new BBM “Social Platform”, which lets developers make the obvious (but only recently implemented) leap of incorporating RIM’s native messaging services into other apps on the device.

“We look forward to working with the team at Scoreloop to provide tools that will further enable our developer community to take gaming to a new level of social integration on the BlackBerry platform,” he writes.